Estonia, Financial Services, Legislation, Technology, USA

"The prosecutor's office and the Financial Intelligence Unit exchanged information with the U.S. colleagues who filed a request for the attachment of the bank account," spokesman Ilmar Kahro told BNS. He said that by the time the request was made the money in the bank account had moved on and the account itself had been closed.

"Information was exchanged, but no acts in criminal procedure could be conducted in Estonia," Kahro said.

He said the matter is no longer being investigated in Estonia. "This is a U.S. investigation," he said.

An unidentified American company was defrauded last year out of nearly 100 million dollars by individuals who created a fake email address in order to pose as one of its legitimate vendors and transfering the proceeds to at least 20 bank accounts around the world, including Estonia, Reuters reported last week. 

The details of the scheme came as the U.S. government filed a civil forfeiture lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan seeking to recover about 25 million dollars in proceeds derived from the fraud held in at least 20 bank accounts around the world. Nearly 74 million dollars has been recovered and returned to the American company.

According to the lawsuit, the perpetrators carried out the scam by creating a fake email address that resembled that of one of the company's vendors in Asia.

The complaint filed on Thursday "appears to be the largest email scam that I've seen," said Tom Brown, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor who is now managing director of Berkeley Research Group's cyber security practice.

The scheme at issue in Thursday's lawsuit took place from August to September and was identified after a Cyprus-based bank identified suspicious transfers, authorities said.

The fraud caused the American firm to send 98.9 million dollars meant for the actual vendor to an account at Eurobank Cyprus Ltd, which discovered the fraud, the lawsuit said. Eurobank, which did not respond to an email seeking comment, on its own initiative in September restrained nearly 74 million dollars of the funds.

The remaining 25 million dollars was laundered through other accounts in locations including Cyprus, Latvia, Hungary, Estonia, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Hong Kong, authorities said.